Endless Changes
by MegsPencer
Summary: Nothing remains stagnant.  Everything changes.  Even Dream of the Endless.  Set after the end of the comic.  Starring Daniel as Dream _work in process_
1. Part One

1 PART ONE  
  
She fell asleep reading a romance novel, and found herself in a war zone. She had to shake her head in disbelief. This was so real, she thought to herself.  
  
"You bet lady." She jumped. The man stood at her side, slightly balding, looking like a lawyer, only in light blue pajamas and fuzzy slippers.  
  
"What is this?" she asked. He shrugged.  
  
"A dream, I suppose. And you're just a figment of my imagination." He grabbed her about the waist.  
  
"What are you doing?" she cried, slapping him across the face.  
  
"Come on pretty figment. This is my dream." She gathered her wits and freed herself from his grasp, leaving him clutching his finger and cursing in pain.  
  
"Bitch! You broke my finger!" She stepped further away from him.  
  
"Go away," she said distantly, wandering off. Suddenly he just didn't seem important any more. A dream, huh? What a strange dream. The sky seemed almost… broken. Starting a bit above the horizon and cracking across the sky was a gray stream of… numbers? Ones and zeros making a split in a blue sky. How strange. And a group of… children were dancing around a fire in which a man was burning, his skin charred and blistered, but his face still, like he had no idea what was going on around him. Almost like he was asleep.  
  
His eyes opened and she screamed.  
  
Darkness.  
  
Liao Ming-hua sat in her bedroom, looking at herself sleeping. She felt very odd. She had no words to describe it, nothing in her experience that could compare to this feeling. She sat for a long time, as the night passed into day. When her alarm clock began to ring, she almost expected to see herself wake up and turn it off. But she didn't.  
  
"Ming-hua?" A slight knocking at the door. She wondered what to do. She didn't know, so she stayed where she was. Her daughter Lei opened the door, a curious look on her face. "Mother, it's time to wake up." She wondered if her child was speaking to her in the chair, or her in the bed. The middle-aged woman made her way to the bed with the slow walk forced on her by her arthritic joints. She reached over to touch the old form in the bed. "Oh," she sighed, sitting suddenly. "I hadn't realized. Already? I'd hoped we'd have a few more years still... I'd hoped. Oh."  
  
"What?" she cried. "Lei? I'm right here. Lei?" She closed her eyes. Her eyelids burned like they always did when she was very tired, or about to cry. She couldn't be dead. Everything felt so real. She felt the carpet under her feet, a slight breeze on her face. She could hear perfectly. Nothing was wrong with her. She was as alive as ever. But why was her daughter crying?  
  
Liao Ming-hua sat in her bedroom, watching as men came and took her body away. Lei came into the room and cried a little, but only a little. Then she left and didn't come back. Ming-hua grew bored with the waiting. For the first time in… days?.. she stood up. Strange, she thought. Her legs weren't sore. She couldn't remember the last time she'd stood up without pain. I must really be dead, she thought. She wandered out of the room, not quite sure where she was going. It crossed her mind that she might be able to walk through walls, but she didn't want to try that just yet.  
  
Throughout her family home everything seemed the same, and yet, oddly, she could feel her death hanging in the air. The door to her daughter's room was closed, and she didn't want to intrude. Her elderly son, blind for years, sat by the stove drinking a cup of coffee.  
  
"Spiked with rum, I bet," she muttered, hoping he would hear her. She thought she saw his ears perk up, but she might have imagined it. She looked into the mirror that hung near the door, and was surprised to see that she had a reflection.  
  
"Funny isn't it?" She turned around quickly. Her daughter-in-law stood near her husband, hand resting on his shoulder.  
  
"Chun?" Ming-hua asked hesitantly. The old woman smiled.  
  
"Yes dear." She approached, her step as slow and hobbled as it had been when she was alive. The women embraced, but Ming-hua was slightly frightened.  
  
"Chun, you're…"  
  
"Dead, love? And so are you, it would seem." Her daughter-in-law didn't seem terribly sad, only slightly regretful. "Death is a part of life, as natural as being born, and yet, it still seems wasteful when someone with so much unspent potential has to go." She was silent a while. "But why haven't you passed? What's holding you here?" Ming-hua didn't know quite what to say.  
  
"I don't know. I thought… I don't know. I can't believe I'm really…"  
  
"Yes, well, you'll get used to it. Strange though." She walked back to her husband. "Your son won't let me go, you see. Silly old man." She smiled fondly at him, just as she did in life. "So I stay here with him, and I'll stay here until he passes."  
  
"But it's been nearly fifteen years!" The old woman smiled.  
  
"I suppose I don't notice so much anymore. And it's been nice seeing the children grow up. There are other spirits that come and see me sometimes. The Chin's little boy was with me for a while. He was wonderful company. He couldn't pass until they found his body. His parents wouldn't believe he was dead."  
  
"I remember."  
  
"Yes, I suppose you do. He was such a nice young man. Always so polite. He loved to hear me tell stories. He liked it better here than with his parents. He said they made him sad. He hated to seem them so miserable. That's why it's important for them to go on with their lives. We don't like to see them moping around keeping us from moving on. You hear that you old man?" She laughed.  
  
"Do you think Lei's keeping me here?" Ming-hua asked. The old woman narrowed her eyes.  
  
"Could be. Wouldn't be like her though. Too religious, that one. Believes in the cycle of things. And you should know if she were holding you here. Everyone else seemed to. There's a bond you can feel at your core." She grunted. "How did you die?"  
  
"I don't know." She gazed out of the window, stepping out of the way as her grandfather passed her by on his way to the toilet. "I was sleeping, having the strangest dream. A man was burning, and he looked at me, and…" she shook her head. "I woke up, only I was sitting next to my bed, and… and my body was there. And Lei came in and tried to wake me up, but I didn't."  
  
"Hmm… Strange," Chun said. "But you were an old woman. Older than I was when I died. But you seemed so healthy... Ah well."  
  
"But I know I died in the dream," she said, working things out as she said them. "I'm sure of it. That man killed me. It wasn't old age. I'm sure. It was him…"  
  
"Death is a funny one. I talk to her sometimes. She came for me after my liver failed, but couldn't take me because of that damn bastard." Ming-hua blushed at her daughter-in-law's language. "Nice lady, Death."  
  
"Death is a person?" she asked skeptically.  
  
"Oh yes," she said, nodding her head as she took a seat at the table. "She looks young, but she really isn't. She has white skin and black hair, and when she looks at you, you can tell she knows everything about you, and that everything is alright. She told me that I could choose what happens to me when I finally pass, when your grandfather dies, or lets me go."  
  
"I didn't see her."  
  
"Strange, that. She's impossible to miss. I wonder… I wonder, maybe that's why you can't accept being dead. And why you haven't passed yet."  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"I mean that you can't pass until Death comes for you, and if she didn't come for you, than that's why you're still here." She shook her head, clucking slightly to herself and muttering in Cantonese. "Strange. But I suppose even she can fall behind." Ming-hua closed her eyes, feeling a sudden headache.  
  
"This is so annoying. I don't have arthritis anymore but I have a headache."  
  
"It's all about your attitude, love. And might I add, you haven't looked that young in decades." Ming-hua looked down at herself, and realized that her body was young, and supple, the body of a woman in her 20s. In her dream… yes, in her dream she'd been young. Was that why she looked young now?  
  
"What should I do?" Her son shuffled back into the kitchen, taking up his seat near the stove. The ghost of his wife stood and went to him, taking up her place at his side.  
  
"You're the only one who knows that. You're not like us. You're not tied down. I suppose you could do anything you want."  
  
"I don't know what I want," she muttered, standing. She gave Chun a kiss. "Goodbye. Perhaps I'll see you again."  
  
"I love you, Mother. Good luck." 


	2. Part Two

PART TWO  
  
Dream took a lover, and for a time, his realm knew only sunshine and happiness. Of course this didn't last, for dreams are not meant to be only joy and laughter. Dreams are also pain, and fear, and confusion, and more often than not, simply neutral, illogical madness. For a time though, all dreams were of happiness and love and sex and comfort, and a world awoke each morning with a feeling of contentment and pleasure.  
  
Her name was not important. She was of the Fairie. Dream had had Fairie lovers before, he thought. The details of his past were not always clear to him, but he believed he had once loved Titania, the Queen of the Fey. She seemed to think so, and he had no reason to question her memories. It was a unique characteristic of Dream and his siblings to be able to die, and be reborn as something new, another aspect that was the same, but also quite different. Only Dream and his sister Despair had ever died.  
  
Some time after the death of Dream, and the birth of the new Dream from the mortal child Daniel Hall, the ancient forces thought to overtake the realm of the Dreaming and have it for their own. They could have succeeded, for Dream was still unsure of his place and how best to rule the Dreaming, but the natural enmity between the two forces kept them at each others' throats even as they attempted to overthrow Dream of the Endless.  
  
The forces of Chaos came first, as was fitting. They ripped through the Dreaming, leaving much of it in wild disrepair. Then came the forces of Order, and as they touched what Chaos had made it turned to silent rows of gray made of ones and zeros, and Dream, sitting in his castle at the heart of the Dreaming, lost touch with a part of his realm, a part of himself. Unable to sit by, he donned his armor and went out to fight these intruders, confidant that he could turn them quickly away.  
  
Some time later, he realized that he was truly in trouble. His Fairie lover fled to her realm, frightened for herself and for her beloved. A world fell asleep to dreams unlike any they had ever known. Some of them didn't wake up, or were caught by the Chaos and driven mad. Some were killed in their dreams, and thus died in the Waking World, but they found themselves trapped as spirits, unable to pass into what comes after death. This came to the attention of Death, older sister to Dream, and thus were the other Endless caught in the struggle for the Dreaming.  
  
They met at in the realm of Destiny, eldest of the Endless, they who are not Gods, they who simply are. Dream came, her face contorted with frustration that something was keeping her from fulfilling her role of ushering the dead to what comes after death. Dream did not come, for he was too concerned to leave his realm. Destruction did not come, for they did not know where he was, and he did not wish them to know. Despair came, as still and implacable as ever. Her twin Desire came, smoking its cigarettes and looking as though it was enjoying the trouble it's siblings were in. And Delirium came, trailing a swarm of small frogs and butterflies, and one dog named Barnabas.  
  
"Why are we here?" Desire said in its slow drawl. Delirium covered her eyes with her hands and played peek-a-boo with herself.  
  
"You know why we're here," Death said shortly. The others had not heard her so agitated in many millions of years. "This has to be dealt with."  
  
"This is Dream's affair," Despair rasped. "We shouldn't interfere."  
  
"your cigarette never goes out," Delirium said, resting her head on her shoulder and closing her green eye. "do you think i should get a cat to keep barnabas company? i think we should help dream, even if he isnt really dream. It would be right. Would you like a kitty to play with, barnabas?"  
  
"No."  
  
"I agree with Despair," Desire said, ignoring the youngest of its siblings. "We don't need to get involved with Dream's struggle. Either he works it out or he doesn't."  
  
"You're not listening, Desire," Death said shortly. "This involves me now, and it's affecting Del too. It's only a matter of time before your realms are touched too. We need to do something."  
  
"The forces of Chaos and Order touch us all," Destiny spoke. As always, the others were not sure whether he spoke, or simply read what was written in his book. "When Death is disturbed, it is unwise of us not to take notice."  
  
"What do you expect us to do, then, oh mighty and all knowing one?"  
  
"That is for you to decide," he replied emotionlessly.  
  
"That is just like you Destiny," Death said. "You tell us we have to do something, then you refuse to help decide what to do."  
  
"This is not like you sister," he replied. "My place is to observe, to read the book as it is written. You know this. I have called you together, you must come to a decision." Death sighed.  
  
"you hate not being in charge. like dream. not dream though. the other one. the old one. Like him. he hated it when anyone else was right. but nooneshouldmesswithdeath. i know that."  
  
"She's right," Despair said. "You're not like yourself." She set her hook in her cheek and tugged slightly. "You really want help?" Death smiled, shaking her head. She hadn't smiled since this had begun, and it wasn't like her.  
  
"Why are you encouraging this? I would have thought you would refuse to get dragged into this. Oh well, I am leaving. You all can play at war, but I have had more than enough." With that, Desire stood, exhaled a puff of smoke and vanished into its own realm. The four remaining members of the Endless family were silent. Finally Death stood.  
  
"I'm going to help Dream. Will any of you come with me?" Delirium bent herself backwards until her shaggy hair touched the ground, then she flipped herself back to a standing position.  
  
"me and barnabas are coming. this'll be fun. but… but you have to promise not to yell at me. do you promise death?"  
  
"I promise sister. Will you come Destiny?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Despair?"  
  
"I'll come."  
  
As his siblings vanished, Destiny sat and read his book. His eyes were dark, but he saw what was coming. He watched them go, and knew that the battle was now to begin in earnest. 


	3. Part Three

PART THREE  
  
The streets of San Francisco should have looked different, she thought, now that she was dead. They didn't though. It was nothing like the movies. She couldn't walk through walls, and though she could move things, it seemed like others just didn't notice. She'd tried to attracts attention to herself once, grabbing a couple oranges from a cart and waiting for the vender to yell thief, juggling the fruits to see if anyone would see the oranges flying in thin air. No one said anything. The day continued as though everything was the same.  
  
It wasn't, though. Ming-hua rounded a corner to run smack into a middle aged man walking quick quickly. The man recovered and moved on as if nothing had happened.  
  
"Sorry about him luv." Ming-hua looked at the speaker and screamed. "Hey, hey, don't be like that!" he said, stepping back.  
  
"You... you... Oh my God!" The man was hideous. His face was gouged by a huge slit, one eye a bloody mess. His body was covered with ugly, festering wounds.  
  
"Please," he said. She heard the emotion in his voice and paused as she was about to flee. "I may be ugly, but it wasn't my fault."  
  
"What... happened?" she stammered.  
  
"He killed me," the man said, motioning ahead, "the one who ran into you." She drew together her courage and raised her eyes to look at him again. She tried to look beyond the wounds to his face, though she felt like she was going to vomit. He was young, maybe 25 or so, and dark skinned.  
  
"What's your name?"  
  
"Miguel," he said. "You have no idea how nice it is to talk to someone. It's been way too long. A lot of the others stay away from me."  
  
"Because... um," she motioned to his body.  
  
"Not so much." He was silent, apparently not wanting to go on. "You haven't been one of us long, huh?" She shook her head. "How did you go?"  
  
"I'm not really sure. I think I died in a dream." Miguel chewed on a fingernail.  
  
"Hmm... I died 24 years ago. In a couple years I'll be dead longer than I was alive." He giggled. "Wouldn't that be funny?" She shrugged.  
  
"I suppose. So you're haunting the guy who killed you?" The ghost nodded, and she had to turn her head, for when he moved his neck the wound there opened and she could see his spine. "My name's Ming-hua. I'm trying to figure out what happened to me."  
  
"Well, some of the others have been talking. They don't talk to me, but I hear things." He leaned a little closer to her like a conspirator. "They say Death has been blocked, and that some people who die aren't passing on. Normal ones. Not like me. I'll haunt that bastard until he dies. But maybe that's what happened to you." She scratched her head.  
  
"What should I do?" He shrugged.  
  
"Whatever you want. You'll get used to hanging around after a while, maybe find some old building to knock around in."  
  
"I don't want to hang around!" she cried. "I want to be dead if I'm dead or alive if I'm alive." He smiled condescendingly at her and patted her shoulder.  
  
"Wait a while. You haven't been dead long. And Death will figure things out soon. She always does." She glanced around at the people passing them by.  
  
"Why don't they see us?" To demonstrate, she grabbed at a passing woman's coat. The woman pulled herself free and walked off at though nothing had happened.  
  
"They don't want to," Miguel said. "The only ones who can see us are the ones personally involved, and even then, it's funny. Speaking of which, I should go. I think he knows when I'm gone. I know he can tell when I'm there." With a nasty grin that showed several missing teeth, the ghost faded off into the crowd. "I'll be seeing you, luv!" She shivered. Not if I can help it, she thought. Standing on the street corner she wondered again what she was going to do. A dog barked at her and she laughed, and thought, so the old saying about animals seeing spirits is true. I can't really be dead! Can I?  
  
One thing she knew though, and that was she was not going to sit around and wait. That wouldn't be like Liao Ming-hua. Her father, Liao Ming-hoa, rest his spirit, had taught her never to sit and take her destiny, but to seize life with both hands. She had to laugh though, even as she thought of his solemn, oft repeated words. She wasn't seizing life at all, but rather death.  
  
She returned to her home, her mind wandering as she walked, and when she looked up at the front of their apartment building she realized she'd made an hour's walk in less than 10 minutes. Well, stranger things have happened, she thought. She entered the house and found her daughter sitting besides her sleeping husband.  
  
"Daughter-in-law," she said, "I need you to tell me something." The woman smiled.  
  
"Of course."  
  
"I need you to tell me if I can dream." The old woman closed her eyes.  
  
"I don't know. I haven't dreamed since I died. We don't have to sleep." Ming-hua thought for a time.  
  
"I need to get to the place where I died. I think I can find my answers there."  
  
"And what answers are you seeking child? You haven't even accepted your death yet." She thought about that for a while.  
  
"I can't just sit here though," she said finally.  
  
"And what makes you think the Dreaming is a place you can just go to?" Ming-hua smiled.  
  
"But you just said as much, didn't you. The Dreaming." She played with the name in her head. "I died there. I'm connected to it, somehow. I know I can go there, and find my answers." Her grandmother narrowed her eyes, and took her grandchild's hand urgently.  
  
"The Dreaming is not a gentle place child," she said, something like fear in her voice. "Spirits go there and don't come back. We're not like the others anymore. There are fates worse than being trapped on Earth." Ming- hua pulled her hand away.  
  
"Will you tell me how to get there?" Her grandmother shook her head. Ming- hua leaned forward and gave the old woman a kiss. "I won't be coming back this time." Her grandmother smiled.  
  
"This house is always open to you."  
  
"I won't be back. Goodbye."  
  
She wandered back into the streets of San Francisco, but this time she knew what she was looking for. She sought out every ghost, poltergeist, and spirit in the city she had lived in since birth, asking each one if he or she knew how to travel to the Dreaming. Some refused to say anything. Some didn't know. She spoke to specters, wraiths and a spook that seemed to be haunting Pier 13. That spook, a young woman who might have been a lifeguard once, knew a ghost on the east side who had bragged about traveling to the Dreaming and returning, so Ming-hua, remarkably not tired, headed that way. She found the ghost in question with very little trouble, but was somewhat shocked to discover that she was the ghost of a cat.  
  
"And why couldn't there be talking ghost cats?" the cat asked in a rough, but oddly sweet voice. Ming-hua sighed.  
  
"This is still rather new to me. You're the first ghost animal I've met since I died." The cat seemed pleased.  
  
"See, you're much better than the rest of you dead humans. Can't admit their gone and dead, can they? Have to refer to themselves as 'us' and the living as 'them' instead of fessing up to reality."  
  
"But if they did that, they wouldn't be ghosts anymore, would they," she asked somewhat timidly. The ghost cat laughed, or at least Ming-hua thought it was a laugh.  
  
"You're right about that. So you want to travel to the Dreaming do you?"  
  
"How did you know?"  
  
"Oh, we cats hear things, whether we're dead or alive or somewhere in- between. Not many ghosts want to go to the Dreaming. Nasty place, that."  
  
"Can you tell me how to get there?"  
  
"Yes. But why do you want to go there. No one goes there and comes back. Except me. I did it. But I don't think you'd like it at all. No."  
  
"Please." The cat purred, whether in pleasure or resignation Ming-hua couldn't tell.  
  
"Fine. There's a door that will take you there." She stared in surprise.  
  
"That's it? A door?" The cat made a slight meowing noise.  
  
"There are doorways to everywhere, you know. Cats know many of them. Are you ready?"  
  
"There's one thing I need to do first. How will I find you again?"  
  
"I will be here. The door is not far." Ming-hua nodded her thanks, and headed off. She walked to a wealthier neighborhood, to a house set somewhat up in the hills. It was night when she arrived, and she decided to test her ability to walk through walls. It felt something like walking through a waterfall, she decided, only without the wetness.  
  
The young Asian child slept in a crib in his adopted parents' room. He was nearly two years old, and healthily chubby, sleeping with a fist in his mouth and a smile on his face. Ming-hua wanted to pick him up, but was afraid.  
  
"I love you little one," she whispered. "I hope you know that. I hope your parents tell you how much we loved you, and why we had to give you up. I hope they teach you to be proud of where you come from." She sniffed back tears, not knowing if she would ever see her grandchild again. The pain became too much and she closed her eyes, wishing she were back on the east side. When she opened her eyes, she was, and this didn't surprise her at all.  
  
"Did you do what you needed to do?" the cat asked. She nodded. "Then come on." Ming-hua followed the cat through the neighborhood, becoming instinctively worried as they entered a slum. She pulled her clothing tighter about her and glanced from side to side at the people they passed. Then she realized what she was doing, and laughed out loud. Who was going to hurt her? She was dead. No one could see her. Somehow she was saddened, though also relieved. The cat stopped at the door to a bookstore, its windows lined with bars. "This is it," she said.  
  
"The doorway is in here?"  
  
"No, this is the doorway." Ming-hua frowned and shook her head.  
  
"I don't believe it. This is just a ratty old bookstore."  
  
"And I'm just a dead talking cat." The cat might have laughed, but Ming- hua couldn't tell. She jumped up onto a fence and with only a quick glance backwards and a flick of her tail was gone. Ming-hua gazed uneasily at the door. A woman exited the store and looked around for a moment, then walked to a bus stop. Horns blared as a young boy dashed across the crosswalk during a red light.  
  
Ming-hua sighed and reached for the doorknob. Her hand passed right through and began tingling. With a cry she pulled her hand away and looked at it. It felt like she'd been given a shot of Novocain. This was no ordinary door. Gathering her courage, wondering what she was diving blind into, she closed her eyes and lunged through the door. 


End file.
